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Meistens belehrt uns erst der Verlust über den Wert der Dinge.
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I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
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Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn't deserve your affection.
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Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
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Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.
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Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
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Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.
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There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
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I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.
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The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.
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Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.
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Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
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He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.
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... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.
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To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
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Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
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To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world , and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason , this and nothing else is philosophy.
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We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.
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To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world.
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Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
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Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.
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Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.
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Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.